Army Feature - Trevy the Great's Space Marines

I saw Trevy's army up for grabs on Bartertown. While I was not in a place to drop what he was asking for a fully painted army, I was impressed with his cohesive color scheme, pervasive conversions, his composition, the detail painting and the extra work he did on his basing. It is clear that he put a lot of extra time and effort that he did not have to into this army. The end result looks good on the table.

Now if this were a BoLS Army Showcase, after that paragraph that took 7 min to write, there would be a giant copied and pasted section written by the person that painted the army followed my 5 or 6 pictures posted with no thought, insight or analysis. But that is not how we roll here at TMM. We use effort!

Cohesive Color Scheme

The things I like perhaps most about Trevy's army is how the all the colors are present on all the minis both large and small. The Tactical Marines look like they belong in the Rhinos. That sounds liek an easy thing to do, but the temptation to over-accessorize the larger minis and paint too much detail on them. That makes them look odd next to smaller minis. There can also be the temptation to paint detail or bright colors in larger areas that can make larger models look cartoonish and out of scale when next to smaller minis.

In short, this army looks like an army.

Conversions

Trevy must have a gloriously deep bits box because almost every mini has some sort of part swapped Mk VI) with wings on the nose sprinkled in. I see DA Power Maul next to a Devastator Powerfist and even a Space Wolf Power Sword all in the same squad. Even further above and beyond, there are bits mixed in from Grey Knights attached to the belts of some Marines, CSM helmets and even some spikey bits.
out and that make this army very unique. I see bits from SM, BA and DA sprinkled through the minis. There are a couple Dark Angel beaky helmets (

I really like this kind of assembly because the minis clearly represent what they are supposed to be, but at the same time the extra bits gives the mini personality and uniqueness. It draws you in and makes you look for other hidden details. It is like an Easter egg hunt. Conversions like this are totally unnecessary in that you could skip them an the army would not be hurt by it but going the extra mile is really classy.

I don't have a good section to stick this in but Trevy is a master assembler. It was difficult to find many mold lines or poorly assembled minis. there are the occasional mistakes, but for the most part this is a well assembled army.

I also like the Armorcast Cinematic Effects. I use them too on occasion and love them. You could sculpt them out of green stuff but Armorcast makes them in a lot of sizes, they are cheap, consistent and made of friggen metal rather than flimsy green stuff.

Composition

I did not get an army list from Trevy, but I listed what I can see from his pictures.

HQ
Chaplain, Chapter Master?

Elites
Sanguinary Guard

Troops
Tactical squad w/ Rhino
Tactical squad w/ Rhino
Death Company
DC Dread
Scout Squad

Fast Attack
Assault Squad
Assault Squad
Vanguard

Heavy Support
Storm Raven
Dreadnought
Devastator
Devastator
Devastator


Overall, the composition is pretty good and that means a lot coming from me. I am so used to seeing spammy armies on list and BT, it was really refreshing to see a balanced list with good comp. It was the thing that made me want to write this article. I like the variety and number of Troops choice. Granted, Blood Angles makes it easy to fill Troops choices with awesome units like Assault Squads, Death Company and the formidable Death Company Dreads, but Treavy also rounded out his army with other competitive but varied choices. I like the choices of both veteran Sanguinary Guard and Vanguard squads, both converted from other plastic sets.

The three Devastator squads tastes a little like Spam but we can assume that they are really there for heavy weapon choices for Tactical Squads and to swap out weapons for the Devastators. It is good to have options.

Details

Trevy did a pretty good job painting the army. The black are done in a quick and efficient fashion (drybrushing grey over black) which is understandable considering how much he had to do. He made up for not doing hard edge highlighting by do chipping and weathering all over the place. With black, sometimes it is easier and more effective to do chipping than highlighting. He put forth some solid table-top effort on doing lighting effects for the lights and scopes. Two things really make the paintjob stand out and those are the power effects and the freehand.

The power weapon effects are simply done by layering blues. I did a similar thing before I switched to blue wash over silver but Trevy pulls it off better and more convincing than I ever did. With the black and overall dark tone of the army, the bright blues really stand out.

Trevy spent a lot of time on the freed-hand details. The Chapter symbols on the shoulder guards, The Sacred Text all over the place, angles on the wings and Rhinos. and (my favorite) the HUD on the Storm Raven. The details are really what makes this army sing.

Basing

Along the same lines as the cool blue Power Weapons standing out, the warm red colors on the lava bases super stand out on the dark army. I am no expert in painting light effects. Every time I tried, I failed. Spectacularly. Trevy pulls it off great. You can even see areas where he not only painted the lava but, critically, painted the reflected light on the black armor. Every mini has some lava painted on its base. He really went all out on the larger bases for the HQ model, the Storm Raven and even on the Dreadnoughts.



Trevy did a great job on this army and I am proud to feature it. You can find more of his work at http://www.trevyspaintingtable.com.